Scripps Site Stirs Up Palm Beach

The Planned Growth Is Not Welcomed By All In The County.

July 20, 2004|By Joe Newman, Sentinel Staff Writer

Like a lot of his neighbors in northwest Palm Beach County, Bill Gurney has nothing but respect for the Scripps Research Institute, whose scientists have developed treatments for leukemia and are working on a cure for Alzheimer's disease.

But all its scientific accomplishments can't ease Gurney's foreboding when he discusses the site proposed near his Loxahatchee home.

Increasingly in Florida, communities are asking whether growth is actually worth the cost of providing new roads, utilities and other urban services. But few times have the stakes been this high for any Florida community.

Opposition to the proposed site by residents, environmentalists and growth-management advocates threatens to undo the $510 million incentive package that brought Scripps to Florida. The controversy has the attention of political leaders everywhere in the state, including Orlando, which last fall was the runner-up to Palm Beach County in landing Scripps.

If the environmental concerns and political squabbles in Palm Beach County aren't settled soon, Scripps very well could beat a path elsewhere.

The campus is set for a 1,900-acre orange grove known as Mecca Farms, west of Palm Beach Gardens. Scripps' labs would sit on 100 acres, with an additional 500 acres for pharmaceutical and medical companies that are expected to flock to the county to be near Scripps.

The real impact, however, would be from the thousands of new homes that would spring up around Scripps.

For a matter of perspective, Gurney's 10-acre lot is considered well into Palm Beach County's countryside -- a quiet enclave of ranchettes, nurseries and scattered orange groves. The Scripps campus would be five miles farther out.

"Obviously, the good that Scripps can do for the health and well-being of the world is an important factor, but we've got to take care of the place we live in," Gurney said.

The Palm Beach County Commission is squarely divided between those who want to build Scripps at Mecca Farms and those who prefer sites in more urban areas, including downtown Riviera Beach.

But officials with Scripps, whose headquarters is in La Jolla, Calif., have made it clear they are on a tight construction deadline and that they think the Mecca Farms site is too far along to change course now.

Last week, a top Scripps executive said that if the Mecca Farms site falls through, the research center could end up elsewhere in the state where it wouldn't have as many environmental and permitting hurdles.

That puts the Palm Beach County Commission between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Keep the campus at Mecca Farms, and they keep Scripps happy and on time for its January construction start. But in doing so, they would likely also spark a legal challenge that could cause an even greater delay. And that might give Scripps the option of canceling its contract with the county.

"From the beginning, I said this was a runaway freight train," Palm Beach County Commissioner Burt Aaronson said.

The Scripps deal came together so quickly that Aaronson and other commissioners knew little about it in October when they hurriedly approved a $200 million deal that includes land and construction costs. The Legislature chipped in an additional $310 million.

County Commissioner Tony Masilotti said there might not be as much controversy now if the deal hadn't been so rushed.

"If this wasn't so secretive in the beginning and we had all the information, we might not be at this point," he said.

Gov. Jeb Bush has said Scripps could do for 21st-century Florida what air-conditioning did for the state during the past 100 years -- inexorably alter its destiny.

That's pretty heady talk, considering that this state was mostly an inhospitable swamp, fit for alligators, mosquitoes and only the hardiest of humans before Willis Haviland Carrier gave the world one of the greatest inventions of the past century.

But if Bush's estimate that Scripps can create 44,000 new jobs is anywhere close to correct, then it's safe to say that Scripps could do for Palm Beach County what Walt Disney World did for Orlando -- become the economic sun around which all else orbits.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the winner's deck. People in the community started questioning the real cost of building the center. Those roads and utilities would cost an additional $467 million, bringing the total public investment in Scripps to almost a billion dollars, though county officials have since juggled the financing to cut 25 percent from that cost.

That's still too much for residents like Gurney, who describes himself as a "semi-retired" real-estate agent. Politicians have a myopic view when it comes to growth, he said.